It’s funny how ideas that you had years ago are often the ones you should have gone with in the first place. Sometimes it was your actual first plan… and your first plan was the best plan, you just couldn’t pull it off when you were starting out. So you had to compromise and change course to something easier.

In this case – having students work in feedback teams with a goal at the end of the quarter – is that idea. They need a purpose, a context for cheesy sayings or conversations, fallback partner to keep them on track, and plenty more reasons to list.

I’ve realized over this weekend that individualism is a major hurdle in class. Everything needs to be totally understood be each individual and then customized within their own minds. It’s great for having high expectations and rigor… but terrible for the creative class culture that I am trying to develop.

So students will be in little teams of engineers or designers moving forward. It is too late this year to change it for this year for most grades, so I will develop the idea with the 8th grade students.

As I started to realize that teams were the answer to some burning questions, the pieces started falling into place and now I can connect about 10 loose threads that have been in the back of my mind over the past few months. Working together with like minded folks is the real secret to unlocking innovation and creativity. Collective intelligence can be powerful (even in middle school).

I’m so excited to get started! There’s so much potential when we come together

“You never realized how thick your fog was until it lifted.”

J.R. Ward